


The warrior, the sage, the little boy enraged

by grayglube



Series: The slow reveal [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Pre-OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:18:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6663910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayglube/pseuds/grayglube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their bed feels smaller, they share it with a ghost and a memory of the night before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The warrior, the sage, the little boy enraged

**Author's Note:**

> There is a shameful lack of Lydia, I saw a deficit and filled it. I also get that Alec with anyone but Magnus puts a lot of people off, sorry not sorry, dudes.

 

Lydia is efficient. It’s Magnus that takes a look at her and is welcoming her for talk and drinks and the overwhelming capability her presence reveals.

 

Lydia is a soldier. It’s Alec that saw Valentine and was sure he didn’t miss, heart beat bruising his chest, he took true aim and Lydia plucked his kill shot out of air.

 

Lydia is blunt. It’s Luke that entertains that Valentine might be after others, not just him, and opened the door for a revelation into who Alec’s parents used to be.

 

Above all she is competent.

* * *

 

There’s a feeling under Alec’s sternum like empty space, his heartbeat echoing like a bell. They’re alone in a room with a bed in it that they’re supposed to share.

 

He’s been thinking of what it would be like in the dark but standing next to her at the altar doesn’t compare to now. The spicy floral perfume and the softness of her hair is not something he can imagine away.

 

She sighs, moves her hair, her zipper doesn’t stick, doesn’t give him any of the trouble he’s hoping for. He looks over her shoulder at the wall, there are runes down her spine but he doesn’t look down fast enough to identify them before she’s turned.

 

She smiles, soft and a little sad, holding the bodice of her dress. He waits for her to let it drop and swallows what feels like a rock. He almost exhales relief when she shakes her head, puts a hand against her head and says, “I think I drank too much, can we just sleep?”

 

“Uh…” His eyes squint and his head tilts, unsure. Her eyebrows come together, “That’s okay, right?” He nods and tries to ease the absolute expression of gratefulness from his face, “Yeah, yeah. Of course.”

 

She nods, mouth pursed as if she doesn’t quite believe him, “No rush?”

 

“Yeah, no. I’m tired too.” His tone already sounds like the agreeable husband. Head again tilting to an angle he hopes appears understanding.

 

He’s surprised by the relief smoothing out her forehead, the way she hunches when she laughs. She pulls herself from the dress so quickly and with so little fuss he thinks of Isabelle when she was little playing dress up and flinging their mother’s formal wear on and off, there’s no complicated wedding lingerie, no artifice of forced intimacy. He’s still standing by the door while she pulls bed clothes from a bag she'd packed earlier in the day, her make-up is off and her teeth are brushed before he even starts to unbutton his sleeves.

 

He’s thankful but wary and he waits for the other shoe to drop. Alec is still waiting once they are in bed next to each other, after they shut off the lights, after Lydia’s puffing softly in her sleep, leg kicking at him and hands pulling the blankets to her side of the bed.

 

He’s not the only one used to sleeping alone.

 

They got married, things go on.

* * *

 

He’s kissing Magnus, ready and willing to arch and press closer, he’s too eager to comprehend the sudden stillness of Magnus tongue sweeping over his palate. Lydia comes upon them and he hears her heels tap away. Magnus confirms for him that his wife has indeed seen them.

 

When she comes back to their room post training, fingers curling under the chafing band of her sports-bra he startles her from his spot at the foot of the bed, “We need to talk, Lydia.”

 

Lydia chews her bottom lip before she answers, “Alec, you’re gay,” she says as if he was only half aware. “We didn’t marry because we wanted each other. We did it to keep things stable, to make things _better_.” She shrugs and he’s stunned by her nonchalance.

 

“It’s alright, you know. You deserve something to make up for this,” she waves a hand and shrugs a second time.

* * *

 

 

They both understand loss he realizes.

 

Lydia works endlessly and trains ceaselessly, because it keeps her mind steady and away from grief.

 

He'd been doing the same to keep his mind from noticing the futility of his pining for Jace, his deep down lack of enthusiasm for what he's been born to do.

 

Alec learns he’s been tired for a long time only because Magnus makes drinks, rubs his shoulder, and undresses him as he’s ready to leave ready to drag himself through another day, Magnus gives him a reason to stay instead, a reason to not feel so tired.

 

He wonders what Lydia has, wonders if the Institute is enough.

 

* * *

  

They’re in quarters that his parents always stayed in when they came in from Idris. He’s not used to the domesticity of marriage.

 

In the morning he hears her set up her hairdryer, the electric buzz of her toothbrush getting louder as it comes out of her mouth. She’s an earlier riser than he is.

 

He moves to pick his clothes out of the closet and bureau only to find she’s already set them out.

 

He toes open the half closed bathroom door,

 

She’s washing her face, hair up in a towel, her pale underwear stark under the sheer black of her stockings. He’s jarred by the difference of seeing her breasts, she has pinker nipples than Magnus.

 

He stares at the runes on the back of her arms, decides it a safe place to look. Her eyes follow him in the mirror as he moves behind her for his towel. He nods and ‘good mornings’ like a husband should, he should kiss her cheek, her shoulder maybe, but he can’t count on being able to make it look natural or even sincere.

 

She blow-dries her hair while he shaves.

 

Her raised arms make her breasts pull up too. He stares and she just rolls her eyes, fondly and friendly. When he knocks her comb off the counter on accident and he picks it up for her. He sees the runes on her spine as he moves to set it by her hand and this time he’s really looking.

 

There’s Love between her scapulas, Grief and Mourning where her heart is from behind.

 

There’s one for stamina and endurance inward at the curve of her waist. It’s faded and half covered under her stockings and he says he’ll go over it for her later. She goes still and silent, her expression is blank until she tells him, “I have another.” She moves her arm, shows him a second one on the inside of her elbow. Her tone is flat. Her eyes are far away, “I thought it would fade but it’s outlasted all the others I had.” It takes him a long moment to understand.

 

“It was a joke, you know…” she smiles, but her face colors and she shakes her head, a grin coming out in the corners. Her almost there laugh dies somewhere in her mouth. Alec doesn't laugh. "John thought he was funny, even when he wasn't."

 

She’s efficient, humorless and grim again, “we’ll be late if you don’t get in the shower. I have to find my white bra, it’s the only one that I can wear with the shirt I picked. Girl problems.” She says, suddenly jocular, her hand gives his arm a gentle squeeze that’s meant to be comforting as she leaves.

 

He nods while his mind picks up speed.

 

He feels like he’s missed something, an opportunity to be a friend, to keep what it is they are pretending to have together moving along, he shakes off the feeling and gets in the shower.

* * *

  

He puts his hand on the back of her hip to guide her into walking ahead of him and she stiffens, pushes off his hand and walks past.

 

He thinks about the rune that hasn’t faded.

 

It’s where the man she loved used to put his hand when they stood together, when they fought, when they came together.

 

Magnus puts mouth marks on him that he has to hide under his clothes, marks Magnus finds later in polite company, a gentle poke here, a pat there and every movement and kiss and sound of the night before comes back to Alec.

 

That night their bed feels smaller, they share it with a ghost and a memory of the night before.

* * *

 

“I’ll never love someone like I loved him. Not ever again. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. But, its different.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Just as long as you know that.”

 

“Okay.”

* * *

 

They visit his parents and hers in Idris, it's few days past their first anniversary. There are small gifts and his Father cooks. Things are nice only because her parents are a real pair of people, never one without the other. His parents have always been separate but together.

 

They spend four days in Idris, they stay in her childhood bedroom and she apologizes for the too small bed. He's too tired to care much.

 

His parents ask no awkward questions, they talk only about the Institute, politics, and Max's uncurbed enthusiasm for destruction.

 

Her parents are the ones who ask if they've thought about kids yet. Silence follows and everyone laughs except him, his mother, and Lydia. He doesn't feel bad, but he does feel as if he should have asked earlier if kids were something she's wanted.

 

"My mother didn't want me to marry John, because she knew I loved him and she thought I was too young to be a mother." She's brushing her hair and he stays silent, just listening. She puts in pins with the same focus she puts in to cleaning weapons, "She thought all people in love have kids but children are targets."

 

He knows she doesn't need him to answer.

 

"That's not going to be a problem is it?" She asks his reflection, expression set and focused.

 

"I agree."

 

She just nods.

* * *

 

It’s late, he’s come back to the institute to find her sitting in the center of their bed, reading over reports and downworlder censuses.

 

He catches a look at himself in the mirror, there’s a smear of metallic shimmer on his cheekbone, his hair is pushed to one side from the way he was pressed against the pillows of Magnus bed. He knows what he looks like.

 

“How’s Magnus?”

 

“He’s fine.”

 

She looks up briefly then goes back to her papers, he takes a shower. In the heat and steam he stares down at himself, there circled ring around his nipple, the imprints of teeth like tiny islands. There’s a blotchy purple-red suck mark on the inside of his knee. There's a glittered print of a bottom lip below his navel.

 

The lights are off when he comes out and Lydia is in bed, eyes open, watching him get dressed in the half dark. She tells him goodnight and rolls onto her other side. He’s sleepless next to her and hours later he asks if she’s sleeping. She isn’t. In the dark he talks. “Magnus was my first everything. But I’m here with you because you’re my partner in all of this. This is ours. We made this.”

 

“Yeah. We did.”

 

“It’s better maybe, that it’s _not_ eros between us.”

 

He means it as a compliment, as if it’s commendable that they are anything but the marriage they pretend they are.

 

“Like parabatai.” “

 

He hums assent, settles in on his side, he thinks he might be able to sleep, but she goes on, “Like you and Jace.” Her words hurt, he wonders if that’s why she’s said them.

 

He wonders when they'll stop trying to convince the other and themselves that they are really partners in anything.

* * *

 

Magnus is the one who wonders out loud about how young he is, he’s half-dressed for another warlock’s birthday. “I never used to _like_ men. But look who’s here, you!” Magnus laughs like bells and Alec wonders what is going on in Magnus’ head. He turns away from his vanity made of mirrors, points at Alec’s sprawled reflection. “And, she likes you more now, I think. Because I like you. Not like I can blame her. My opinion carries a lot of weight.”

 

“My stock rises by association.” Alec mumbles to the pillow next to him, he doesn’t want to rise to get dressed. Magnus’s mouth twists, his head pulls back and it’s a smiling shrug he gives in return, “Well, I am sort of like Kodak oh, too young for that reference?”

 

“Is that a mundane thing?”

 

Magnus just shakes his head with mirth. "Next you'll tell me you've never seen supermarket sweep. You should come tonight, you know.”

 

“Lydia and I are planning to go to Idris again soon, we need to plan.”

 

“Bring her. I bet she’s fun at parties.”

 

Alec remembers his sister saying, ‘Magnus thinks she’s impressive.’

 

Even if she didn’t know it, she was walking enlightenment of the divine intervention, comic reality slant. His parents, his nerve to say fuck it, his not so dissimilar juxtaposition to Clary, Lydia holds up a flood light on the shadowy things he’s never been brave enough to confront while it was dark. He’s never seen her at a party. “Alright, fine.” Alec answers just to see the look of surprise on Magnus perfectly accentuated eyebrows.

* * *

 

Lydia had been away for a week in Idris. They fought before she’d gone and he’d taken her gentle assertion that she was going alone as an insult.

 

She’d come home, silent and sad, she’d gone to bed without telling him she was back and it’d been half a day before he noticed her return.

 

Alec had left her be and later Magnus had held his face, close, told him, "It's Carnival in Rio." He tells Alec she had come by before she went back to the institute, got drunk and slept it off on the velvet settee. Alec feels ill.

 

Magnus sighs, "You are so young. You don’t know yet, what it’s like. The loss of someone you love, the loss of someone you chose to love, that _changes_ you. There is a before and after. It’s not a scar you wear, it’s a hole you fall down. You look up at yourself, staring down and wonder how you’ll ever get out of it. You understand a lot Alec,” Magnus let’s his hands drop from his face, “but you don’t understand that.”

* * *

 

Magnus looks at Lydia. Appraises the shape of her from behind, her dress is white and fits like it’s poured wax. Magnus has been staring at Lydia since she came over for drinks and found them both tangled together, Magnus mouthing his cock, him arching away from the wall hand fisting Magnus' hair, eyes open.

 

Alec sees the look Magnus has following her through the crowd now and asks the dumb question. “So,” he starts confident, stumbles his way through the rest of his words, “You used to be with women and then…now, you’re with me?”

 

Magnus smirks, “Kinsey had a scale and he numbered it. Your number can change and I’ve just been alive longer.” With a quick peck he tells Alec, “I’ve seen a lot,” He waves a hands, “Think of the senior population. Many of them become more tolerant of things they grew up hating, complete one-eighties. Racism, sexism, fear of their own genitalia.”

 

“That didn’t answer _any_ of the question.”

 

“I here with _you_ , Alec.”

 

“You used to love Camille.”

 

“And she loved me. Then she broke my heart.”

 

Magnus says it so simply it makes Alec stare dumbly for a moment too long to appear unaffected by it. Finally he asks, “And Lydia?”

 

Magnus shrugs. “Is very attractive.”

 

Alec looks away, breathes deep, sips at his drink and clears his throat, he feels something like inadequacy settle deep in his bones. Magnus does not allow him the reprieve of his silent thoughts.

 

“I don’t see where we’re leading this conversation but now I am _very_ interested.”

 

“Okay, well things got weird…things _are_ weird” Alec starts.

 

“How?”

 

“She saw us.” He says like he’s speaking with a half-grown child.

 

“Oh, yes. She did. And?” Magnus waves a hand, like he’s trying to wave away his concern.

 

“Well she hasn’t said anything…-”

 

“But, you think she’s considering saying something?”

 

“Well, yeah.”

 

“Hmm, I think I know what we need to do.”

 

“Great, please.”

 

Magnus leans close, presses a hand to Alec’s chest, “ _You_ need reevaluate things.” It’s startling, Alec pulls back, “What?”

 

“You, your feelings. About, Lydia.”

 

“Feelings?”

 

Magnus nods, mouth shut and smiling, eyes closing like a cat’s, “And I need a drink,” a waiter passes with champagne, he plucks the flute like it’s a flower, “Thank _you_.”

 

Alec waits until he’s done sipping, “What feelings, Magnus?”

 

Magnus’ hand cups him between the legs, “Your feelings, these kind.”

 

Alec presses close to hide the hand between his legs behind the drape of Magnus formal long coat, “But I’m with _you_.” He nudges Magnus’ hand down and away.

 

The warlock doesn’t even pretend to be put off by it, he just leans closer, “Yes, and that’s not an end all be all to how _you_ feel.” The hand isn’t there but magic is, it presses firmer, rubs.

 

“I don…-”

 

He needs to slip away before things get noticeable to everyone else, Jace and Clary, Isabelle and Simon, Lydia, but Magnus has been drawing them slowly away into the dim light edges of the room.

 

“There’s a lot of different ways to like someone, to love them, to care about them. You can want someone you’ve never wanted before simply because one day they show you something inside of them that you’ve never seen, or you find something in yourself you didn’t know was there.”

 

“I, Magnus…”

 

“Alec,” Magnus smiles, his magic ebbs away and Alec’s hips stutter forward, “you really need to relax. You’ve been thinking about Lydia in not so friendly ways. People do that to their mailman or their best friends or the kid’s elementary school teacher, it’s strange but it’s not groundbreaking.”

 

Magnus is smiling softly, pressing a hand to his cheek with benign humor, later, away from the party Magnus is kissing him, wet and fast, there are hands pulling Alec out of his shirt.

 

“This is not the way I thought this talk would go.” They are in his rooms at the institute, Lydia is somewhere in the crowd, dancing, smiling, without him.

 

“Did you think I’d be confused? Angry.” The notion seems to confuse Magnus in and of itself. Alec shrugs, shirt open and being pulled off, “A little, yeah.”

 

“I like Lydia, you like Lydia. Lydia likes us. We’re adults, Alec. We get to decide what we do about things like that.”

 

“Stop thinking, stop talking.”

 

Magnus wags his head like he was obviously on his way to doing just that. Alec finds himself being pushed back towards the bed but reaches a hand out for the edge of the night table.

 

“Not the bed.”

 

Magnus eyes gleam, like he’s just be proved right, “I told you your marriage would be lonely.”

 

“I have you,” Alec’s mouth is rougher than usual, and Magnus lets him lead them both to the floor.

 

After they’ve both spent whatever’s been building in them without a chance to be satisfied yet tonight Alec sprawls, nude and tired, the ceiling has stars on it. Magnus stretches next to him, “My shoulders are raw,” he complains while grinning, “and that’s too nice a bed to not be fucked in.”

 

“You have a bed.”

 

“I didn’t mean for me.”

 

“Stay away from my wife.” Alec means it in jest but Magnus props up on a braced arm.

 

“Is she though? Don’t you have to consummate a marriage for her to really be your wife?”

 

“It’s never been about that between us,” Alec asserts.

 

“I thought so too, but you’re older now, you’re a different man. Lydia’s softer…” Magnus starts to pull on his clothes, tossed around them in a misshapen circle of formal wear. “And she wasn’t wearing underwear tonight, can’t hide a panty line in that dress.”

 

“You’re one to talk.”

 

“Well, yes. People who don’t wear underwear tend to hope they’re going to get _fucked_ later.”

* * *

 

“You said: ‘I’m in, Whatever you need.’ I don’t know, I guess then is when I thought maybe someone got it, even if they didn’t like it, what it meant to have to be the deciding factor.”

 

“Are you alright?”

 

“I’m fucking tired. On paper, I’m perfect, the ideal person to lead, but in practice? People don’t want logic, they want to fill in the blanks, like those things…nouns, verbs.

 

“Mad libs?”

 

“Yeah, and I’m tired, Alec.”

 

“You’re drunk.” His smile is easy, he means it to be a joke. He’s in a good mood, he’s probably drunk too. It’s her birthday. It's already their second year married.

 

“That too.”

 

She reaches for him, he lets her. Her arms under his, fingers pressing into his shoulder blades. Her mouth presses against his neck, he hears and feels her inhale. He lets her and after she pulls back, not embarrassed or apologetic, she just holds a hand over her forehead, “Yeah, I’m drunk.”

 

She’s bleary eyed and it’s like watching something wilt.

 

“Sorry, shit. Alec, just, yeah,” she exhales shaky, slips away. He hadn’t noticed how close he’d been, the absence is a cool rebuff, it’s strange how open the room feels.

 

“Hey,” he inclines his head, close so she knows he means what he’s saying, “It’s _okay_.”

 

Her expression is sad and unconvincing, she nods, smiles, but it falls and she blinks hard the way his sister does when she’s trying not to cry. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

 

She falls asleep still half-dressed in her day clothes, her starched shirt gapes open. He watches the way her breathing changes the curve of her chest under the white bra she’s always losing.

 

He stares at her bare feet and painted toes, her skirt hiked up high so she can sit, or sleep, or sprawl without the zipper popping. Her panties don’t match.

 

The shape of her body is different but it’s become less foreign.

 

When he’d been a kid going through puberty with a perpetual hard-on he’d wanted to touch, be touched, would think about skin and sex in vague half-thought ways that got him off before he ever needed a story or a face to go with his fantasies.

 

Then it’d been bodies shaped like Jace.

 

It’d been a comfort, a fostered attraction, formative and then he’d force away the specifics of any and all fantasies that may have had too much blonde hair and muscular thighs and strong hands and the conspiracy of growing up, being best friends, being strong together, like brothers but not enough like brothers to stop the idea of fucking.

 

He’s close enough to trace a look over the shape of her sex under her underwear. There’s warmth in his groin and it’s late enough to consider things differently.

 

When he leaves things feel different, he walks the city and then sits in the glowing neon shadows of Magnus apartment.

 

Magnus comes home quick once the wards have been tripped, he tells him he looks less than stellar.

 

Alec doesn’t rise, he’s been hard since he started walking. He looks up from under his brow, the look Magnus says Byron perfected on his sister and both Shelleys. “Come here,” he says and Magnus smiles.

 

Magnus doesn’t stop smiling even when Alec breaks the zipper on his slacks. They fuck on the couch. Sloppy and with limbs cramping, rushed and much needed relief floods Alec’s system, Magnus’ hair mussed and falling over his eyebrows, he’s all cat eyes and a gamine grin.

 

Alec braces hands above his own head, pushing at the arm rest, legs open and grappling for purpose, the couch creaks.

 

Magnus laughs, loud, throaty. “Fucking you is like fucking a giant,” fingers wrap around Alec’s cock and Alec digs his heels into the cushion and the other armrest, body bridging up.

 

There’s magic curling over his chest, across his lips.

 

“Somebody’s desperate.”

 

And that’s it, the laugh and the tone, the magic, Magnus cock pushing deep, his hand giving him a stroke that’s like the rough pull of his teenage fumblings. Alec comes, spurts and slumps.

 

Magnus pulls his thighs wider, coaxes the last of Alec’s orgasm out of him like pulling teeth, it’s brutal and gruesome satisfaction. “I’m gonna come in you.”

 

The matter of factness makes Alec groan in agreement, his voice gravel and growl, “Make a _fucking_ mess.”

 

Magnus shudders.

 

In the morning Magnus shudders again, perplexed and genuinely baffled. “You’re never that filthy mouthed, I didn’t know it was something I was missing.”

 

“Really? That does it for you?”

 

“It does it for _everyone_. It’s like a surprise. Because you’re so quiet all the time.”

 

Alec snorts.

* * *

  

Lydia and Magnus help a pair of warlocks caught up in dark politics, Magnus says they’re kids by his own age standards.

 

Alec’s away and Lydia doesn’t consult with him.

 

Magnus and her doing what needs to be done, efficient and quick only makes Alec envious. Once he shows up the fight is already won and watching them make his mouth go dry. They fight like true comrades.

 

After they get back to the institute he sits with them in the infirmary, watching others work on them while they laugh and buzz and preen over a perfect mission and new battle scars. “Sanctioned too,” Magnus intones gravely. Lydia knocks her shoulder into his, “It was all _very_ official.” Her laugh is like bells. Alec finds himself scowling like a parent trying to seem tough in front of their children.

 

“Well, I have to go babysit my duo of fledging irresponsible magic practitioners. He points between Alec and Lydia, “Drinks, my place. Both of you, let’s say tomorrow at seven.”

 

It’s the middle of summer and Lydia reminds him it won’t even be dark yet.

 

“Consider it day drinking then.”

 

Alec snorts, Lydia pushes at his shin with her boot. He walks Magnus out of the infirmary.

 

“She saved my life tonight.”

 

“That’s dramatic.”

 

Magnus raises his hands to placate him, “Okay, grievous injury. It would have hurt. A lot.”

 

“She’s pretty good at saving people.” Alec agrees.

 

“And I kissed her.”

 

“What?” Alec smirks, close to laughing.

 

“I kissed your wife when you weren’t looking, it was nice.”

 

Alec shakes his head, “You’re impossible.”

 

“Oh, I know.”

* * *

 

Lydia’s bandaged and eating cereal in the briefing room, it’s late. He walks past and she waves him close, “Alec?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Her spoon tings against the ceramic bowel. “I kissed Magnus, tonight. And I probably shouldn’t have.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“It’s fine.” Alec leans close and down, he presses his mouth to hers and she tastes like sugar and milk, he pulls back, sucks the taste off his lips,“There now we’re even.”

 

Lydia looks anything but happy. “Even?”

 

“…”

 

“Who? You and me?” She rolls her eyes, rises fast and comes as close to stalking away as she ever does.

 

“Lydia, I didn’t mean..., you _know_ what I meant.”

 

Her hands fist at her sides, and she stops walking away, she doesn’t turn, “I know, I know. I’m just, I can’t talk about this.”

 

“Talk about what?”

 

She walks away.

 

He feels her later, a knee pressing down and making the mattress dip, then the bounce as she sits, he reaches out a hand, feels for her in the half-dark of the room. He rubs her arm, she puts a hand on his, “I’m sorry, Alec. I haven’t wanted anyone since John died,” she sighs and doesn’t speak again for a long moment, “and then suddenly I do and it’s just not going to happen.”

 

“Lyd…-”

 

“I can’t do this.”

 

He sits up and presses his shoulder against hers, his legs hang off the bed.

 

“I can’t do this thing where I sleep next to you or stand next to you while we brush our teeth together in the morning, or watch you put my shirts away or I correct you’re spelling on memos. I can’t, and I don’t have to.”

 

“I know.” He rubs his face, “I don’t want us to pull everything down.”

 

“Me either, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m taking a different room. I just wanted to tell you.”

 

She leaves and he wonders if he should have offered to be the one to find another bed to sleep in.

* * *

 

“I’m with Magnus because he’s Magnus, not because he’s a man. I was in love with Jace because he was everything I had ever wanted in the person who I wanted to love me. Sometimes I look at you and I feel things the way I did when I was sixteen and training with Jace and didn’t have a clue how to process between my dick and my brain, sometimes I feel the way I do when Magnus and I are together. Sometimes it’s just you, and I wonder why I’ve never tried to be with you because the first time we met and you came in pretending to be Valentine and then put everyone but me to task about reaction time part of me was in love you. You’re a lot of who I want to be.”

 

She stays silent. He wants to know what she’s thinking, wants to know if her feelings come from curiosity or loneliness or a misplaced spike of lust for someone else.

 

“Maybe we should have tried but I didn’t want to make things any stranger than they’ve always been, I didn’t want it to hurt you, I didn’t want it to happen and have it be what ruined everything.”

 

She doesn’t say anything, just stares.

 

“Could you just say something?”

 

“I…um, I’ve got a lot of stuff to…hmmm,” She stops talking, walks away nodding.

 

For his part his mouth is open and he’s at a loss of what to do next. Lately, for once he seems to be the one waiting, the one who is being walked away from. He’d thought he was beyond that.

 

She comes to his room, late, still dressed from the day, he invites her in and feels almost naked in just his sweatpants, she looks at him like Magnus looks at him, fond, appraising, full of want. When she kisses him he kisses her back and it doesn’t feel like anything other than overdue.

 

“I’m lonely and I want you but I don’t just want this now and then never again. We’re not going to do this and then never talk about it or pretend we didn’t. And I’m not going to ask you for it if it’s going to be something that hurts Magnus. That’s not the person I want to be.”

 

She leaves for her own bed.

* * *

 

 

Magnus, again, looks like he’s won the first place prize.

 

“Well now annulment will forever be off the table, thank god.”

 

“I thought this would feel wrong.”

 

“You mean asking me about my feelings about you and Lydia?”

 

“That’s not what I asked.”

 

“You don’t need anyone’s permission. Wanting Lydia doesn’t preclude you’re feelings for me. I’ve told you this before.”

 

“I know,” Alec feels his eyes narrow, confusion and an inability to collect his thoughts in as few words as possible pull at his face like shoe strings tightening. “Why?”

 

“’Why’ what?”

 

“You’re so different from everyone, that’s all.”

 

“I don’t like saying this but you have much less time than I do, and I don’t want to be the reason you don’t have things you want, especially if I know those things would be good for you. I want Lydia to be happy too, she’s done a lot of me. She’s done a lot for _you_.”

 

“…”

 

“It’s not just about sex, it’s about comfort.”

* * *

 

When they train together next things are different. It feels like the muggy blanket of electricity and warmth before a thunderstorm.

 

They spar and from there it’s a study in miscommunication.

 

She throws him and he pins her, they grapple and land hard hits. It’ nothing new but now she’s aware of his hips pushing down against hers with intention, he knows she leans close to press her breasts against his spine.

 

He waits until she comes out of the shower, goes to the closest to change for their routine walk around the city.

 

He comes up behind her and it makes him worry that she’ll wonder if he’s trying to pretend he’s with Magnus.

 

She toes away her damp towel and inhales against his skin, he wonders if she likes the way he smells, all sweat and the man he’s become.

 

She moves his hands to places over faded runes and he wonders if she’s pretending he’s someone who’s held her before.

 

They press and pull and push together but it doesn’t take long before they realize the heat of how they started has faded with the fear of being misunderstood.

 

She’s frustrated, he’s only half-hard. The indecision has broken the moment.

* * *

 

"Women are different than men. Men want you to treat them as gently as they can never be treated in public, women want to be treated as roughly."

 

Magnus demonstrates with his hands all over his body.

 

"Women taste like the ocean and they smell like baking bread."

 

Alec is hard, Magnus looks smug.

* * *

 

“I’m here with you.” He assures her, dipping low for her mouth.

 

She breathes, “Yeah, me too.”

 

His hands cover her chest, she arches under them.

 

“I like this. I like your breasts.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“I get the appeal.”

 

She grins down at him from her nearly nude perch on his thighs, “Use your mouth,” he folds his lips around one small breast, tongue laving hotly over her nipple. She heaves a breath, “Oh, fuck.”

 

He startles when she pushes his mouth off, slips off his lap to the bed besides him. She turns, gives him her back and moves her hair over one shoulder, he presses closer but feels unsureness settle in. She rolls her shoulders back. “We don’t have to do it this way. I just like it, it’s the end of the day, you know. Sometimes it’s nice to not do the work.”

 

She reaches to push down her panties.

 

He puts his hands on the sides of her thighs, he’s careful to avoid her back, the curve of her waist, she tells him, “I don’t care where you’re hands are, I just like them on me.”

 

“I don’t want to do something you don’t like.”

 

“You’re not. You feel good.”

 

He’s pushing between her thighs, she’s slickness and heat. Her sex slides over him, he doesn’t nudge inside or press up yet. For her part, Lydia sighs, slips back and forth and he’s been wondering about something so he asks, “When was the last time you got laid, anyway?”

 

“Not since I was back in Idris.”

 

He wants to ask who, he wants to ask how she likes things, he wants direction but the way her shoulders relax and her spine curves has him willing to figure it out together.

 

The push inside is slow, the sound is obscene, Lydia whines and then huffs out a laugh, “All at once.”

 

His neck arches back, he holds the groan in his mouth as he complies and gives up the dramatic entrance.

 

He pulls her back by the hips, her hands let go of the headboard to press against the pillows, and she doesn’t protest. Her head hitting the bed with a soft sounds. “That better?”

 

She puts her forehead between her wrists, replied in low tones ‘yeah,’ and lets her spine arch deep.

 

He lets her circle back, he stirs inside and watches her hands twist the sheets. He doesn't move yet.

 

“Up.”

 

“What?”

 

He sits, pulls her into his lap and bounces her. She lets out a sound that has him asking if she’s alright, she is, “it’s deep, that’s all.” Their legs uncurl and stretch along the length of the bed, she leans forward to plant her hands for leverage.

 

He keeps her close with his arm around her hips, forces her back when she tries to pull off. He lets the bed bounce them and he leaves wet prints of his mouth on the back of her shoulders.

 

Her hair is everywhere, her body squirms and she starts to whine for movement. When she comes it’s soft and gentle, when he comes it’s with hands tightening over her thighs spread wide, mouth open on the back of her neck.

* * *

 

Magnus is staring at him, propped up against the headboard, he says, “I’m going to compliment you, but it’s not going to sound completely like a compliment.”

 

“Alright.” Alec grins cheek on his arms, lying prone and deeply satisfied.

 

“There’s noticeable improvement.”

 

“With me?”

 

“With you _in_ me, specifically. Oh, don’t look so pleased.”

* * *

 

They sit in Magnus’ loft apartment and Alec had thought it would be more strained when they'd all sit in a room together, but his two lovers seem content to talk about the declining demon to shadowhunter ratio and the uptick in downworlders in general than to focus on the oddness of the _thing_ that' going on.

 

It’s like Magnus reads his mind, he looks at him so suddenly.

 

“Stop thinking so much, your brain is cooking.”

 

Lydia hides a laugh behind her hand. Alec leans into the couch, legs pulled up, at perfect ease, he pulls from his proffered drink and swallows. “I was just thinking we have an anniversary coming up.”

 

“What is year three anyway?” Lydia asks.

 

Magnus pretends to think deeply on it, “Traditional, leather. Modern, crystal. Matching outfits might be in order.”

 

“We could just make it a three-way.”

 

They both seem to appraise him with new interest, Alec sips at his drink. “Just a thought,” he shrugs. They both start speaking at once.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Again, (because it bears repeating) I get Alec and any female character makes some readers clutch their pearls and say "Well, I never!" but hey, that's why there are tags.
> 
> Title is from a Damien Rice song. I want more Lydia/Alec/Magnus stuff, get on it readers.


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